A boron, nitrogen, and oxygen doped π-extended helical pure blue multiresonant thermally activated delayed fluorescent emitter for organic light emitting diodes that shows fast k_RISC without the use of heavy atoms

Narrowband emissive multiresonant thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) emitters are a promising solution to achieve the current industry-targeted color standard, Rec. BT.2020-2, for blue color without using optical filters, aiming for high-efficiency organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). However, their long triplet lifetimes, largely affected by their slow reverse intersystem crossing rates, adversely affect device stability. In this study, a helical MR-TADF emitter (f-DOABNA) is designed and synthesized. Owing to its π-delocalized structure, f-DOABNA possesses a small singlet-triplet gap, ΔE_ST, and displays simultaneously an exceptionally faster reverse intersystem crossing rate constant, k_RISC, of up to 2 × 10⁶ s⁻¹ and a very high photoluminescence quantum yield, Φ_PL, of over 90% in both solution and doped films. The OLED with f-DOABNA as the emitter achieved a narrow deep-blue emission at 445 nm (full width at half-maximum of 24 nm) associated with Commission Internationale de l'Éclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.150, 0.041), and showed a high maximum external quantum efficiency, EQE_max, of ≈20%.